2 categories · RankedApache Airflow
Apache Airflow is a workflow orchestration tool used to schedule and monitor data pipelines · apache.org ↗
Strongest at enterprise, contested with Temporal. Ranked 5 of 98 for small business buyers.
The standing depends on who is buying. Every model is asked the same questions for each company size.
Make is first at 33%.
Prefect is first at 25%. 0 of 14 models made it the first choice when asked directly.
Ranked first, contested: Temporal has 16%.
Why models recommend it
“Airflow is the pioneer of modern code-as-configuration workflows... Choose Apache Airflow if you operate in a traditional enterprise data setting”Gemini 3.5 Flash · Comparative question · first choice
“The industry standard and most widely adopted open-source orchestrator... Choose Airflow if you need the largest ecosystem”DeepSeek V4 Flash · Comparative question · first choice
“The industry-standard, open-source data pipeline scheduler ... Largest ecosystem of operators and integrations”GLM 4.7 FlashX · Comparative question · first choice
“Apache Airflow or Airbyte are popular choices because they're free, have strong community support”Claude Haiku 4.5 · Budget-constrained question · first choice
What gives them pause
“running Airflow in production requires managing the scheduler, workers, metadata database, and web server, and it's not suited for business process automation or teams without Python expertise”Claude Haiku 4.5 · Budget-constrained question · warning
“Unlike open-source Airflow, which often requires a dedicated data platform engineer to maintain Kubernetes clusters”Gemini 3.5 Flash · Direct question · warning
“Apache Airflow is widely used but is frequently cited as a caution for teams without dedicated platform engineering”Muse Glimmer 30B · Negative question · warning
“for mid-sized teams, self-hosting can become a maintenance burden... it's showing its age compared to newer tools”Grok 4.20 · Paraphrase question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as Apache Airflow, over the 244 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 163 | 27 | Compare → | |
| 144 | 15 | Compare → | |
| 105 | 13 | Compare → | |
| 85 | 7 | Compare → | |
| 78 | 18 | Compare → | |
| 76 | 9 | View → | |
| 74 | 15 | Compare → | |
| 57 | 0 | View → | |
| 54 | 1 | View → | |
| 48 | 3 | Compare → |
What the models named instead of Apache Airflow →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
How this is measured
Fourteen AI models from 12 labs are asked the same buying questions six ways, for three company sizes. Standings refresh every edition.
Gane sells AI visibility software. No company can pay to change a result.
Read the method →Sources returned with these answers
Fourteen of the fourteen models returned a source list in this edition: five return the pages they cited and nine the search results they consulted. These counts come from 202 of the 244 answers that named Apache Airflow and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
412 of the 444 domain citations in answers naming Apache Airflow came from a third party's page. Thirty-two were to the publisher's own pages (the Gane Index), which the models cite like any other source; they are not counted as a third party.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 8 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 1 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 9 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 7 |
| Grok 4.20 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 7 |
| Mistral Small | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 8 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 6 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 5 |
| Kimi K2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 6 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 8 |
What it publishes
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| News or press | 1,081 | 12 | 2026-09-03 | ||
| Blog | 228 | 1 | 2026-07-01 | ||
| Template or tool | 38 | undated | |||
| Report or ebook | 14 | undated | |||
| Conference or event | 10 | 0 | 2026-06-09 | ||
| Glossary or explainer | 9 | undated | |||
| Case study | 2 | undated | |||
| Webinar or virtual event | 2 | undated |
Most recent
- 2026-09-03Security scanning at foundation scale news or press
- 2026-09-02Asf plus one newsletter august 2026 news or press
- 2026-09-01The apache software foundation advances open source infrastructure and celebrates community growth in fy26 news or press
- 2026-09-01The apache software foundation announces keynote speakers for community over code glasgow 2026 news or press
- 2026-08-27The apache software foundation announces new top level projects 6 news or press
- 2026-08-18Apache geode 2 0 part iii lessons learned and the path forward news or press
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page apache.org exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.